Via MR, Intrade has Fukushima reaching Level 5 nuclear disaster status at 94%. Hard to tell how meaningful this is (volume looks tiny), but the people I know who know most believe that the media has been overly optimistic thus far, which is scary. For example:

A particular feature of the 40-year old General Electric Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor model – such as the six reactors at the Fukushima site – is that each reactor has a separate spent-fuel pool. These sit near the top of each reactor and adjacent to it, so that cranes can remove spent fuel from the reactor and deposit it in a swimming-pool-like concrete structure near the top of the reactor vessel, inside each reactor building.

If the hydrogen explosions damaged those pools – or systems needed to keep them cool – they could become a big problem. Keeping spent-fuel pools cool is critical and could potentially be an even more severe problem than a reactor meltdown, some experts say. If water drains out, the spent fuel could produce a fire that would release vast amounts of radioactivity, nuclear experts and anti-nuclear activists warn.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the engineers who are battling to keep Fukushima's four damaged reactors from spiraling out of control, as well as the millions of people in Japan affected by the horrific quake and tsunami of last week.

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